Supercars superstar Craig Lowndes drives on with TeamVortex in 2017 and despite being in his 40s is still as quick as the young guns – and every bit as hungry to add to his Bathurst and title tallies.

Lowndes first appeared on the Australian touring car radar back in 1994 when he debuted for the Holden Racing Team in the Sandown 500, stunning everyone a few weeks later by finishing second at Bathurst in partnership with Brad Jones.

After attempting to put together an open-wheeler deal overseas, Lowndes went to HRT for 1996 and was an instant hit, clinching the championship, as well as both Sandown and Bathurst.

A tough stint in International Formula 3000 in 1997 saw Lowndes return home and re-join HRT full-time until the end of 2000, claiming two more championships.

One of the biggest stories in V8 Supercar history was Lowndes’s move to Ford for 2001 but a lack of success with firstly the Gibson/00 team and then Ford Performance Racing prompted a move to Triple Eight and he has never looked back.

In 2010 he moved back into a Holden as his team made the switch from Ford and reunited with former HRT teammate Mark Skaife to win the endurance double at Phillip Island and Bathurst.The duo recombined in 2011, won again at Phillip Island, finished second at Bathurst, and Lowndes finished runner-up to teammate Jamie Whincup in the championship.

Lowndes came within touching distance of the title in 2013 when the hunt for the championship crown came down to the last race of the season, but he was to finish second for the third consecutive year, making Triple Eight Race Engineering the only team to have ever finished 1-2 in the championship three years in a row.

After a strong start to the 2014 season, Lowndes suffered several misfortunes in the second half of the year, leaving him to finish fourth.

He finished runner-up to Mark Winterbottom in 2015, adding a sixth Bathurst 1000 victory to his name with Steven Richards; and ended 2016 a close fourth behind his teammates and Scott McLaughlin after an unplanned late-season engineer change.